Schumacher: "We Can Fight For The Win"


By DCX
July 2 2005

Michael Schumacher set the 3rd fastest time in free practice today as Rubens Barrichello took 7th, showing Ferrari's improved pace. Schumacher is confident that Ferrari and more specifically he himself can win the French Grand Prix. Badoer Prepares Ferrari

Schumacher: "We Can Fight For The Win"

DCX
Michael Schumacher
FP 1:11th - 1'16.838
FP 2: 3rd - 1'15.204

After coming of the most hollow victory of his illustrious career at last weekend's United States Grand Prix, Michael Schumacher proved that Ferrari is indeed back up to pace. Schumacher set the 11th fastest time in the first practice session for the French Grand Prix at the Magny-Cours circuit, a typical result for that session. Michael's second session however, yielded a much better result as the German took the 3rd fastest time. Here is what the 7-Time World Champion had to say about his sessions:

“This has been a productive Friday and I am quite happy with what we have achieved. The car seems to behave quite well as do the tyres, which probably explains why I have the impression the car is sliding around less than usual on this track. I think we can be fighting for the win this weekend. The team has worked very hard over the past weeks and even months and it seems that all this work is beginning to pay off now.”

Rubens Barrichello
FP 1:14th - 1'17.389
FP 2: 7th - 1'15.605

Rubens Barrichello also took what seemed to be a rather fecious result in the US, although he too was quick in France. Barrichello doesn't typically set extremely fast times during the Friday sessions and today was no exception with a 14th and a 7th quickest time in FP 1 and 2 respectively. Rubens did however get in quite a bit of running and that will aid Ferrari in making the best choices for qualifying and the race. Here is what the Brazilian had to say after his decent first day:

“Magny Cours is always a tough place to get the set-up right. I think we have done a reasonable job with the two sets of tyres I used. We have a pretty good idea already which tyre to choose for the rest of the weekend. We still need to improve the package, although I am a lot happier with this new tyre. Now we need to work on our pace for the race distance.”

Ross Brawn
Technical Director

Ferrari's Technical Director Ross Brawn was pleased to see that Ferrari has improved quite a bit, but he still wants more:br>
“The lap times we saw today are quite encouraging, however, we have not yet found a good balance on our cars. So we still have some work to do on the cars to improve that as we have too much understeer, which is costing us precious time in the long corners. Once we have fixed that, I think we will be quite competitive for the rest of this weekend.”

July 1, 2005

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